Those were the words that Fed chairman Ben Bernanke used to describe the financial markets (and by extension the economy) these heady spring days when everybody else with a rostrum, it seems, has pronounced the so-called liquidity crisis contained. There’s a great wish for American finance to return to business-as-usual – raking in fantastic fees for innovating new modes of tradable paper…
May 29th, 2008 | James Howard Kunstler | 3 comments | ContinuedArchive for James Howard Kunstler
(born 1948) is an American author, social critic, and blogger who is perhaps best known for his book The Geography of Nowhere, a history of suburbia and urban development in the United States. He is prominently featured in the peak oil documentary, The End of Suburbia, widely circulated on the internet. In his most recent book, The Long Emergency (2005), he argues that declining oil production is likely to result in the end of industrialized society and force Americans to live in localized, agrarian communities.
Angry Mortgagees Protesting Bear Stearns Favouritism
Last Wednesday, a bunch of peeved mortgagees protesting government favoritism in the Bear Stearns case entered the lobby of the company’s (soon-to-be-former) headquarters building in midtown Manhattan. While it might not seem like much, I view the symbolic “penetration” of this corporate stronghold as the very first sign of a much broader citizen revolt against the extraordinary protections being shown to crapped-out investment banker boyz…
April 10th, 2008 | James Howard Kunstler | 7 comments | Continued
The Price of Oil Remains Stubbornly Above $100 a Barrel
In the deeper background of all this is the all-important oil story that nobody in politics or the media wants to pay attention to. Notice that in the fervid unloading of assets this past week, as investors dumped their positions in the commodities markets, the price of oil remained stubbornly above $100-a-barrel when it was all over on Thursday afternoon. Well, maybe they’ll ratchet down a little further this week, but the trend line will prove to continue remorselessly upward in the months ahead…
March 26th, 2008 | James Howard Kunstler | 0 comments | Continued
Eric Janszen’s Bubble
Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published on James Howard Kunstler’s blog, here.
Eric Janszen of iTulip.com has made a splash in the mainstream media with his Harper’s Magazine cover story on the “The Next Bubble.” His thesis is that a new tidal wave of investment will shortly roll toward “infrastructure and alternative energy.” By this [...]
How to Escape the Black Hole Called the U.S. Economy
The dark tunnel that the U.S. economy has entered began to look more and more like a black hole recently, sucking in lives, fortunes, and prospects behind a Potemkin facade of orderly retreat put up by anyone in authority with a story to tell or an interest to protect – Fed chairman Bernanke, CNBC, The [...]
January 23rd, 2008 | James Howard Kunstler | 8 comments | Continued
U.S. Election Campaign Could Expose Frightening Realities for America
At the beginning of the month, CNN was frantically advertising a set of “live” debates between the presidential candidates – Democrats Sunday and Republicans Tuesday, with loads of “color commentary” before and after.
This big media show was staged in New Hampshire, whose once-significant early primary election has been reduced – like so much else in [...]
Post Peak Oil: Effects on the Stock Market and World Economy
Whenever somebody complains about “the lies that George Bush & Co. told to get us into the Iraq war” (as Frank Rich did in The New York Times recently), I wonder how those lies compare to the lies that the American public tells itself every day – for example, that America could get along without oil from [...]
May 10th, 2007 | James Howard Kunstler | 4 comments | Continued
Oil Futures Bidding To Heat Up As Energy Crisis Looms
Oil ended 2006 roughly where it began, at just over $60 a barrel. This reassured the public that all talk about Peak Oil was hysterical blather from a lunatic fringe. It was reinforced by the publication of the mendacious Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) report issued this fall – a tragic document put out by [...]
April 19th, 2007 | James Howard Kunstler | 4 comments | Continued
Energy Indepence and the New Congress
The Democrats won big in the United States mid-term elections. But do they have what it takes to make the drastic changes that are really important to America…our push toward “energy independence” chief among them?
November 17th, 2006 | James Howard Kunstler | 0 comments | Continued